The Perfect French Strawberry Tart | A Day Baking in My Tiny Parisian Kitchen + Linjer Jewelry

Hello everybody, welcome back to my channel. My name is Ainsley DuRose. I'm a pastry chef living in Paris and this is Lola. Someone asked who she was. This is my little chihuahua named Lola. Today I thought I would share with you one of, well I say this a lot, I say one of my favorite but this is truly my favorite dessert which is a strawberry tart. And since it's spring and strawberry season I thought it'd be the perfect time to share with you my favorite recipe. Anything with strawberries is truly my favorite type of dessert. I actually made, well of course I made my own wedding cakes, but I made three of them. And two of them had all of these strawberries that my mother-in-law actually brought from Brittany which is where the I think the best strawberries are. And she brought them all the way down to the south in a car so I could use my favorite strawberries. So I love strawberries and this is truly my favorite, my favorite dessert. So let's make it. So we're first going to start with our pastry crust which is called a pâte sucrée which is just a sweet pastry crust that I'm going to make by hand. Again you can make a lot of these recipes if you have a standing mixer or maybe some handheld electric whisk or something but I just like to show that everything can be made with just your hands and a bowl. You don't really need any fancy equipment or ingredients or space to be able to make something really delicious. So first what you'll need is your flour and this is just plain in France it's called T55. In the U.S. I think it's all-purpose but something that's just plain with nothing added. And just a pinch of salt and I add a bit of I like to use powdered sugar. If you have regular sugar you can use. I think that it kind of makes for a smoother dough. And then I like to add a bit of almond powder or I think it's also called almond flour. So you don't need too much of this it's just for a little bit of extra flavor and texture but again you just substitute with flour if you don't have it. So next I'm going to add my butter. Again I use only unsalted butter just because I like to be able to control how much salt goes in my pastries. And if you can try to use a European type of butter something that has a really high fat content. This one has about 82 percent so if you can find something similar to that it's um it's it's the best because if it's not high in fat then it can be the butter is a bit too watery so it'll affect the texture of your dough. So I do about 100 grams of flour to about 50 grams of butter. And you want the butter to be very cold and we're going to cut it in very tiny little cubes. And of course before you make the dough make sure to take off all of your jewelry like my ring from today's sponsor Ligneur. I don't know about you but I'm actually very selective about the jewelry that I wear and if you've seen any of my videos you see that I actually don't wear too much jewelry but that's why I love this brand so much. They have really such beautiful and timeless pieces that they make to last for years because my skin is actually very very sensitive to jewelry that's why I don't wear too much jewelry. But what's great about Ligneur is that everything is made with 100% recycled gold and silver and all of the jewelry is hypoallergenic and nickel free so I don't have to worry about any agitated skin. I actually have no issues wearing it with days on days on days on end and because they sell directly to customers online that's why their prices are half the typical prices for same luxury retail prices you would find elsewhere. So I am truly such a fan of all of these pieces like my rings and my earrings but they also have a lot of other pieces that I actually have my eyes on like their tennis bracelets all of their beautiful and delicate necklaces that can be stacked. I see a lot of other rings that I would like to add to my collection but if you'd like to purchase one for yourself or even as a gift because it's Mother's Day soon I will leave the link below in the description and make sure to use my discount code AINSLEYDUBROSE for a special offer. But let's get back to the dough. So for my crust I use my I just use my hands. Thankfully I was genetically blessed with um uh poor circulation so my hands and my feet are very cold so I don't have to worry about having hot hands when I make my dough but if your hands do run a bit warmer you can always use a pastry cutter or knife or or something otherwise if you have cold hands you just pinch the butter into the flour. My poor circulation works really well for pastry but for winter time I do wear minimum about three to four socks I guess there's pros and cons to life. So you don't want to overwork this too so you just want to keep pinching the butter into the flour till it resembles almost like sand and there's a couple little pieces that are like pea sized but you just want it to look just like sand. So now I'm just gonna add my egg. I only need about 20-25 grams of it. An egg usually has about 50 grams. Put your egg in another bowl just whisk it. A trick that you can do when you have egg because you know how sometimes when you like you can see it's kind of like there's big chunks if you want really smooth eggs you just add a teeny tiny bit of salt and it's just a small amount you don't have to worry about adding over adding salt but you just add a teeny tiny bit of salt and it breaks down the egg so it's all smooth and one texture and you don't have like those little clumps of I don't know what they're called uh I don't know what they're called in English yeah when you have like the little clumps like you would get with the mixed with the flour and the egg and then it's like it's like that little like gloopy yeah it's like the texture is not smooth it's like all the all uneven and I don't know what the word is I don't think we have a word for it just like nasty nasty clunk nasty clumps but a little salt will um for some reason just breaks down the the egg to make it um make it smooth so we don't need the whole egg we just need about half of the egg so that's why I put it in a separate container and then I'll just weigh out so now make sure all of your jewelry is off because we're gonna get really uh messy so I just use my hand and I kind of go around trying to get everything together but again you don't want to overwork your dough you're just trying to get it just to the point where it all clumps together in one ball of dough also if you hear some um construction it's just the Paris life I I tried to film around it but sometimes it's just unavoidable so it's uh the Paris charm I would say now I would suggest to after you've made the dough to cover it with some type of film or plastic and place it in the fridge for about 20 minutes but if you are short on time you can just go ahead and roll it out won't be too big of an issue so I think that's what I'll do I like to do it is I take two pieces of parchment paper with some flour and I roll it out between that just so I ensure that it doesn't stick and it's less of a mess I find also if you hear other noise that's Lola we have lots of noise today that we're working with so I just put a light dusting on the parchment I place my dough on top flatten it down just a bit just a bit more flour on top not too much so you don't want to add too much flour to the dough just want a small dusting of it so it doesn't stick I'll place the other parchment on top and then I like to roll I start from the middle and I work my way out and you're not trying to press too hard on it you're just trying to put an even pressure to roll it out out quarter so to make sure that your dough is wide enough you just measure the diameter of your pan and then however high it is let's say this is 30 plus 2 to 34 so I like to make sure that my diameter is maybe like 36 centimeters just to be sure that I have enough dough to put it inside and then every so often I will remove the parchment put another dusting of flour and then I'll flip it over do the same thing remove the parchment add a bit more flour the dough to be able to move in between the sheets of parchment you don't want them to stick otherwise it'll just become a mess you're really just trying to get the dough to be able to slide in between the the sheets of parchment when I put the dough onto the pan I like to keep one side with the parchment that way it keeps all of the dough together because otherwise if you try to move it onto the pan the dough could tear apart so I like the parchment it kind of keeps everything together so now we're just going to place the dough into the crease of the pan so how I do that is I just bring the dough down and I push it into the corner because if you don't do that if it doesn't form a perfect right angle at the crease of the pan then when you go to bake the dough it'll just slide down and it won't uh it'll just shrink and it won't keep the the height of the of the pan I just use my rolling pan to roll it over you could use a knife but I find this a bit more satisfying so I just take my rolling pin and roll over the dough so my husband just came in and said he would come back when the tart is done um some people think he films my videos he does not he is simply my uh my taste tester that is his job title I think so he'll be back now I'm just going to prick all of the bottom of the dough this way when it bakes it won't one side bake unevenly than the other or you get bubbles if you don't do it uh but I also for this type of crust I don't what you call blind bake it it doesn't really shrink that much if you make it properly and you let it rest long enough it's not gonna shrink I only blind bake if it's something like a pate brisee or a or something that has a really high butter content this one is fine to go in the oven just as is but first you want to put this in the fridge for minimum 30 minutes sometimes I'll do an hour if I have or if you're a little bit limited on time maybe put in the freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes you really want to make sure that this is nice and cold that the butter is cold when it bakes it doesn't shrink or you have any issues with it so put this in the fridge for about 30 minutes so our dough has chilled and now we're going to put in the oven at about 180 degrees celsius or 350 fahrenheit for about 15 or so minutes um you just are looking for it to be completely golden brown because we're not baking the tart again um so we want to make sure it's completely uh browned so while our tart is baking we're going to move on to the pastry cream which is just a simple vanilla I guess you could call it custard too just need milk eggs sugar vanilla and a little bit of cornstarch to thicken it so what we're first going to do is we're going to put our milk in a pan we're going to put it on about medium heat just for it to steam you don't want to boil it you just want it to come to a steam so this is a full fat milk um it's pastry so you don't want to skim out on the fat so make sure to go full fat so we'll just put this on medium Lola we'll just put this on medium heat you are stinker are you behaving today definitely not she's not behaving today every time we try to film she wants attention as if she doesn't have attention 24 7 from us as she is the light of our lives just sit there and look pretty as I was saying we'll just put this on medium heat just to bring to a steam so while the milk is steaming we're going to move on to the egg part so I'm going to use one whole egg and two egg yolks just because I don't like to have too many egg whites especially since I'm not going to use them for like a meringue or anything for this tart so just one whole egg and then two egg yolks so I find that using half whole egg and half yolks doesn't really affect the texture too much but I guess if you do you could just use all yolks I would use about instead of two yolks one whole egg I would probably use five yolks I'm going to add our sugar this is just plain regular sugar add a pinch of salt I'm going to add the corn starch to this and then I'm going to add my vanilla extract which already has whole vanilla beans in it if you just want to use vanilla beans by themselves I would use probably one vanilla bean cut it in half take the seeds out and put it in with the milk to steam and let it extract the flavor for about five or ten minutes but if not if you just want to use extract then I use a good amount of this I use probably about a tablespoon just because I really like that rich vanilla flavor you know your milk is ready when it you see all the steam coming up but it hasn't bubbled yet and the reason you do this to temper your eggs because if you just put all of this on top of the stove it'll cook your eggs so you'll end up with scrambled eggs instead of a nice custard so this just tempers the eggs because we'll put this into the mixture and then we'll put it back on the stove to cook till it becomes nice and thick and pour it back into our pan so put this back on the stove at about medium heat continuously whisking making sure to really whisk the bottom and around the sides the eggs don't start to cook so this does take a little bit of time but really just do not leave this you want to make sure that you're constantly whisking it otherwise you will end up with scrambled eggs and it won't be good and then all of that work will be for nothing so just keep whisking it and eventually you'll feel it start to thicken as it's thickening now and then it'll start to bubble on top and you see it's starting to get nice and thick so once it looks like this and it's bubbling that means it's at the right consistency and it also means that you've you've cooked it to the right temperature so that you don't have to worry about any type of bacteria or whatever so cooking it is to make sure you cook the egg and that it gets to the right consistency take it off the heat and we'll add our butter so now that our crust has completely cooled i'm going to add the pastry cream right into it then i'm just going to take my spatula and just smooth it and make it flat all around if anything i kind of like to keep the middle a little bit taller so it's kind of like a tiny little dome just because i think it's pretty once you start to add the strawberries and it kind of has a bit of height variation on it but if you want you can make it completely flat and smooth so now i'll put this in the fridge to completely set the cream and then while that's setting we will work on our strawberries so you just want to wash and dry your strawberries and then i'm going to cut off the bottom part and then slice them into small slices you can decorate with strawberries however you want but i like a lot of strawberries on there and i like a little pretty pattern but again you can do this however you want as long as you have nice pretty strawberries i think i think that's all that matters so again you can put the strawberries on however you like i just put them one on top of the other fairly close to one another and then i'll just keep doing it all the way to the middle so to keep your strawberry tart shiny and to make sure that the strawberries last longer a little secret is to add a bit of apricot jam that i add a little bit of water to so it's kind of runny it's a very uh very thin paste and we're just going to brush it just a little on top and it'll really keep the strawberry tart nice and uh shiny it wouldn't be a pastry by Ainsley Duros if there were not flowers on top of it i just think it'd be pretty to contrast the the red of the strawberry there you go that is my strawberry tart um it's super it's a super simple thing i think to make but it's um i think you can make quite a nice centerpiece for for your event or just to have just a sweet treat but again it truly is one of my favorite my favorite dessert to make and to eat so let's um let's try it how is it it's everything good in life i mean really is there anything better than a strawberry tart so what do you think love nothing better in life well thank you for watching and i hope this inspires you to make a strawberry tart soon um again my recipe will be down below in the description and also if you would like to purchase a beautiful ring or bracelet or necklace uh from LINEAR i have a special offer with the discount code AinsleyDuros and i'll put the link also down in the description so you can go there make a wonderful gift for you for someone special but let me know what else you'd like to see me bake now that we're getting into some more warmer weather or where you'd like to see me go in paris or nearby and in france until then you have a good day and happy spring